Stegosaurus

"Stegosaurus In Situ", 7x9 linocut, available at my Etsy store.

Here's the most recent dinosaur print. It's a stegosaurus, probably one of the most iconic dinosaurs. This dinosaur is so familiar I wanted to do something a little different, and represent it as an articulated specimen found in place. I used a fair amount of artistic license, as it's unusual to find such a large dinosaur so perfectly laid out, but I like that it's not a perfect reconstruction like you might see in a museum.

more prints

Here's the second of my dinosaur series of block prints. It's not actually a dinosaur, but a marine reptile commonly called a Plesiosaur. These creatures ranged in size from 3 to 12 meters in length, and had amazingly long necks as well as four paddle-shaped limbs.

One of the reasons I started doing these prints is because I felt a sort of kinship with fossil preparators carefully carving away the rock to reveal the specimen. The process of carving to reveal an image really captured my imagination and I was particularly interested in portraying skeletons as they appear on site, rather than the fully articulated and assembled pictures we usually see. This image is more of a compromise, mostly because the neck was so long it had to be curled around to fit on the paper.

I did two different versions of the print, one without a background color, and one with a background that I printed with a rather beat up piece of wood to give some texture. They're available at my Etsy store.

Dinosaurs!

"Camarasaurus" linocut block print on Rives BFK. 8x10 image. Available at my Etsy shop.

Anyone who looks over my bookshelf will see that evolution is a central topic of my reading. Recently, I've gotten really interested in dinosaurs, particularly the new feathered fossils coming from China linking birds to dinosaurs. Somehow I missed that geeky kid stage of obsessing over dinosaurs, and I'm making up for lost time. This is what I hope is the first of a series of fossil prints. I've compiled a lot of source materials, and now I get to play with my new press!